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John Bishop, Believing by Faith (2007)

File:University of Auckland Coat of Arms.png


John Bishop, a professor of philosophy at the University of Auckland, wrote Believing by Faith a few years ago in order to present an updated view of William James' observations on the will to believe. In his honor, I've begun this entry with the coat of arms of that University.


Bishop's book is subtitled, An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Belief, a nod in part to an essay by William Kingdon Clifford, published in 1877, simply titled "The Ethics of Belief."


Many people have since written on the cluster of issues on which Clifford and James took contrasting positions back in the 19th century, so Bishop is both returning to the source and replying to a lot of the subsequent cluster of commentary.


I won't get into the particulars of what Bishop adds to the debate. I'll only say that Bishop's preface is intriguing. It describes the book he was trying to write before he ended up writing this one.


"My initial motive was to write on alternative concepts of God -- alternative, that is, to the prevailing classical theistic concept of God as the supernatural, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator ex nihilo....People have too readily assumed that rejecting belief in omniGod excludes any kind of continuing theistic commitment."


His interest in the ethics of belief developed because he wanted to clear the ground for a book on the combination of 'omniGod atheism' and alternative-God theism.


I hope he did get around to writing that other book.    
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  1. HenryFebruary 9, 2014 at 11:53 AM

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  2. HenryFebruary 9, 2014 at 12:07 PM

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  3. HenryFebruary 9, 2014 at 12:33 PM

    It is one thing to believe in something (God) for which no evidence exists. It is another to believe in something for which overwhelming evidence that it is false exists (God's being both omnipotent and omnibenevolent). There is no plausible solution to the problem of theodicy. Justifying the existence of evil on the grounds of free will doesn't work for natural disasters. Justifying it on the grounds that, from God's perspective, it is necessary for a greater good that humans cannot understand doesn't work because it is still evil, and an omnipotent god could achieve his greater good by a means that does not entail evil. Consequently, people who feel a need to believe in a god for which there is no evidence must, if they are reasonable, accept that their god cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

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  4. ChristopherFebruary 9, 2014 at 3:54 PM

    Both James and Bishop pretty clearly agree with you. Each exercises the will to believe on behalf of something (or someone) much less paradoxical than the omniGod. Indeed, James wrote, "God himself ... may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity." Obviously He isn't "Omni" if He is still capable of, much less in need of, increases in strength and being that depend upon us. He may well, then, be blameless for evils he is trying to but has thus far been unable to resolve.

    On a related pop-cult point, the creators of South Park once put a similar sentiment into the mouth of a talking otter known as the "Wise One."

    http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155419/kill-the-wise-one

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  5. HenryFebruary 10, 2014 at 8:29 AM

    Does anyone believe in such a god? From an intellectual standpoint, being less irrational a construct than a god who is omnipotent and omnibenevolent is hardly a reason to believe in something for which there is no evidence.
    In any case, most people who believe in God, I think, accept that there is no evidence that he exists, and believe on the basis of faith. But would there be any psychological inclination to have faith that such a limited god exists? Would he provide comfort or be worth praying to? Would people think, "I'm going to believe in a limited god because he may draw vital strength from my fidelity, and the world may be a bit less screwed up if he does?"

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  6. ChristopherFebruary 10, 2014 at 11:47 AM

    If a futuristic crudely-animated and mob-martyred talking otter can't persuade you of the merits of the idea, I'm not sure what would. But more seriously: do you mean by "such a god" any God short of the omnigod? Then I'm sure the answer is "yes," and much of the world believes in one such, more-or-less inarticulately.

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